Matching Front Entry Doors and Garage Doors

One of the first things a person sees when coming up to your home is the front door and the garage door.



Matching them up will make your home look better and improve the overall curb appeal of your home.

Know Your Home’s Style

Before you can start matching your entry door to your garage door you have to know the overall style of your home. While blatant juxtapositions may work depending on the look you are going for, most people settle for an overall harmony between the door and overall architectural style. Even if you have a common home-style don't think this means you have to pick the same cookie cutter entryway as everyone else - there are plenty of different choices based on your specific needs. Traditional home styles such as colonial or craftsman usually work better with more rustic doors. The entryway of these types of homes don’t necessarily need glass, but will probably look best with some sort of glass feature. Small windows along the top of the garage door should be used to match this if that’s what you are going for. More modern architectural styles can incorporate more idiosyncratic doors - think along the lines of multiple panes in odd shapes. Even older homes, such as those inspired by European history, might need a rounded door. While a rounded garage door is all but impossible, you can accent it with a rounded molding above the garage. Talking about accents, you might be able to invest around your entry door as well. A common contemporary embellishment is to have a pair of sidelights on either side. This, coupled with a glass pane in the door, allows for a much brighter and open look. If you have a home that is symmetrical, such as a Greco-Roman style, then you can double up on the doors for both the entry and garage to create a powerful look. More pastoral homes can go even more off the beaten path and use dutch entry doors.

Complementary Designs and Material

Once you have a good idea of what style of home you have, you need to look for a way to keep a seamless design throughout. As mentioned before, the entryway is the focal point of the home and the garage should serve to support it. That means you are going to want a garage door or doors that look good without overwhelming the entry door. Matching exactly isn't necessary and instead, you should look to incorporate complementary designs into your garage door. Look at your preferred entry door abstractly - what are the shapes on it? How does it work with the surrounding architecture? Is it simple or complicated? All of these questions should be asked to get an idea of how to get a garage door that matches well with it. If you have a rounded entry door then you should look at a rounded glass pane on the garage door. The style of each pane should roughly match. Follow the adage that each style should be sisters and not twins. If your entryway encompasses rectangles you might want to go with square style on your garage or vice-versa. More exotic styles such as fleur-de-lis or other floral arrangements in the entry can be supported with a more conservative and austere approach on the garage. What is recommended to match straight-out is the material. Thankfully both sets of doors have similar materials they are made out of - fiberglass, steel and wood. Each set of materials can impact your options in how you want to customize them along with general maintenance in the future. Wood is the most coveted and arguably looks the best - along with having a high level of customization. That being said this material is usually pricier and requires more upkeep than either fiberglass or steel. Regardless of the material, you should match it up with not just each other but also use ity as a complement to the home's architecture. Modern homes usually have steel where something like a Colonial would be best with wood.

Color Theory and Your Home

Probably one of the first things people perceive when they look at a home is the color, so picking the right colors for your entry and garage door is incredibly important, to say the least. When picking a color, try to avoid what is trendy - what is popular today becomes tacky tomorrow. When getting colors you usually want to only pick a few - a veritable smorgasbord of colors can come off as too busy and incoherent. The general rule here is to pick three colors - one for the walls, another for the trim, and the last for things like shutters, windows, and of course - doors. Anyone who has picked up a paintbrush will know the rudiments of color theory. For those that aren't familiar, don't worry as there are only a few principles you need to follow. Bright colors expand or highlight areas while darker colors do the opposite. Colors that are brighter are usually recommended for entryways but a strong argument can be made for darker hues as well depending on the style. Make sure whatever colors you pick works well together. Complementary colors are those opposite on the color wheel - such as orange and blue - and aren't usually found on homes. Analogous is the opposite of this and are those that are close to each other in color - such as red being next to orange and purple. Going outside of the color wheel and looking at black, white, and gray hues can actually be more freeing than confining. For instance, a red door with a gray and black exterior can really make a pop. Just in the same way the style of garage door should work as a compliment to the entryway, so should the color. Matching the garage door color to that of the trim works in this regard but can be a bit monolithic looking. If you do pick a different color for your garage door you probably want to make it a different color than the front door so it doesn't compete too much.

Make Your Entry and Garage Doors Pop

Before you can actually match your entry and garage doors, you first need to pick a style that compliments the type of home you have. A giant wooden slab of a door would look weird on ultra-modern architecture and a steel garage door would be odd on older styles. Matching the actual doors together is a bit trickier - the general rule being that the garage should support the entryway and not overpower it. That means to pick something that is similar and not exactly like each other. This expands not only to design but color as well - with most painters recommending a trifecta of colors. Feel free to bend these principles a bit to best serve the style you are going for. If upgrading your garage door would be more like putting lipstick on a pig, it may be time for a new garage altogether. In such a case, Danley's has you covered with the best detached garages in the Chicagoland area. Get a free quote today to start your new garage project.